(At this point please accept my apologies for repetitive use of the eff word. Normally I’m quite the well-spoken little madam. Confessing I’ve been screwing my Daddy has brought out a new me. I might be subconsciously hiding something from myself, but terms like “making love” do not seem appropriate anymore. No, “fucking” is the word that best fits the bill.)
Of course I should have known better than to trust the great British climate.
By the time we neared Peterborough conditions overhead had changed significantly for the worse. It had become more like a nuclear winter than any sort of summer. By the time we reached Wakefield it was raining heavily. And, by the time we reached my home town, the rainwater was coming down in stair-rods.
My intention had been to walk the mile between the railway station and that evening’s pub, drawing a few admiring glances as I went . . . but not in that monsoon. Damning the expense, I piled into the first available taxi and, five minutes later, settled up right outside the front door.
‘Call it a fiver,’ my cabbie said.
I could see from the meter that the fare was over eight quid. But my Asian driver (who had introduced himself as “George” and had a much better Yorkshire accent than I did) just grinned at me.
‘Call me direct anytime you need a cab,’ he said, thrusting a personalized card at me. ‘I guarantee to give the best ride in these parts.’
Because he looked like a young Omar Sharif, I returned his grin.
‘Next time I need a good ride I’ll think of you,’ I assured him.
The dash into the pub took me all of a second, but still I got soaked. Hesitating a moment, sheltered in the entrance, I assessed the place. It was brand-spanking-new and, despite my extensive experience of local watering holes, it wasn’t a venue I’d been in before. In fact it must have been built since I left home.
To be honest it wasn’t the sort of place I’d normally be seen dead in. Patently themed, it catered for kids as well as old fogies. That is to say it catered for everyone apart from twenty-year-old students. But at least the kiddie play area was tacked on at the far end of the building (out of sight and sound) and the pensioners were tucked away in a designated dining room, towards the adjoining hotel.
I was prepared to bet there were dozens of identical establishments up and down the land, all selling the same range of drinks and offering the same meal deals. Prefabricated outlets or what!
On the positive side there was a large drinking section right in front of me, with Daddy holding court at the bar, half a dozen blokes round him, hanging on his every word.
That was Daddy all over There wasn’t a homo bone in his body but fellow males adored him . . . and by that I mean straight fellow males. Tall, broad-shouldered and full of bonhomie, what wasn’t there to like?
Yes, he was one of those lucky souls admired by men and women alike. Everyone wanted to be seen in his company.
Well, everyone apart from one specific wicked witch of a bitch.
It was possible that Daddy was entertaining complete strangers; he could do that effortlessly, even in a completely new environment. I reckoned he probably knew this audience though. He was after all in the nearest boozer to his new digs: a delightful penthouse-like pad “loaned” to him by a buddy in the wake of Mother’s betrayal.